Mougins and the French Riviera

Hello, here is a fine wel­come to you all from me in my lat­est jour­nal entry. In this par­tic­u­lar episode I shall be talk­ing to you about my hol­i­day to the French Riv­iera. Thanks to an impres­sive holiday-package deal my mum is part of, both I and my girl­friend were priv­i­leged with ‘free’ accom­mo­da­tion at a four/five star resort some­where in the world, after perus­ing the cat­a­logue we opted for “Le Club Mou­g­ins” in the val­ley of Mou­g­ins, an area in the south of france, 6km north of Cannes. It’s a covey, remote, old and rural region with very kind peo­ple and the lux­u­ries of French liv­ing; a boulan­gerie, a frui­terie and a poissonerie.

On Thurs­day, the last day of March, I packed together my things:

and headed to my girlfriend’s house.

from there we headed to Heathrow, caught a plane and flew to Nice airport:

We were greeted by a taxi dri­ver bear­ing my name, we were dri­ven 40km or so to our resort where we were met by a lovely French recep­tion­ist, he pro­ceeded to check us in, give us all the details and told us our room would be ready at 4pm. (The time zone issues were slightly con­fus­ing, nor­mally France is one hour ahead of Eng­land, but this par­tic­u­lar week Eng­land had changed their clocks to BST whilst France had yet to do so, putting us on the same time, we didn’t real­ize this for a while, then after cor­rect­ing our­selves and becom­ing con­fi­dent of the actual time, the clocks changed in the night. Yay for con­fu­sion!). Any­way, to make up the time until 4pm, we decided to look around the lit­tle vil­lage, the medieval vil­lage atop the hill and pur­chase some food for our starv­ing bel­lies. This was the view from reception:

We pur­chased fine cheese from the super­marche and baguettes from the boulan­gerie and enjoyed our first French meal on a bench in the sun. Con­se­quently, every­day we bought crois­sants, pain au choco­lat and baguettes in the morn­ing for petit-dejeuner and ate baguette, cheese (camem­bert, brie and finer more acquired taste cheeses), pork saucis­son and Poulain dark choco­late for lunch. Trav­el­ling to the top of the hill we were met with breath­tak­ing views, thin windy streets, posh restau­rants, art gal­leries and a view of the mountains.

Need­less to say, we were happy with our choice. After spend­ing an hour in a lit­tle shop while Saman­tha chose a water­colour paint­ing of the region and admir­ing a mod­ern art gallery we were shown to our apartment

A one bed­room, full bath­room, half (well-appointed) kitchen, tv, stereo, din­ing area and bal­cony apartment.

Our first full day in the resort was a Sun­day, so rather than try­ing to travel to any of the local cities we decided to trek around the local region and head up the hill across the way from us which looked to have a cas­tle at its mount. It turns out the region was a splat­ter with rich peo­ples expen­sive vil­las, laven­der farms, stun­ning view points and a strong wind. We found an extremely remote lit­tle area to enjoy our French din­ner, sit­ting on a crum­bling old wall amongst wild flow­ers we watched over a view of local town Grasse, it looked a lit­tle like this:

On Mon­day (Lundi) we nav­i­gated via the bus routes to Cannes, the city famous for its film fes­ti­val. We sifted through the streets, pass­ing the Fer­rari shop and the Chanel shop, we were shuf­fled away from the Palais du Fes­ti­val because they were set­ting up some­thing big. We did get a chance to see all the famous film stars hand prints sur­round­ing the com­plex, my favourite being Akira Kurosawa’s:

Dif­fer­ing from our weekly lunch time tra­di­tion only once, we ate at a Creperie, first a fine salad, then a crêpe filled with cheese ham and egg and to fin­ish with a rich dark choco­late crêpe. Here’s Sam enjoy­ing her jam dessert:

After tak­ing in more pic­turesque views, the large docks and expen­sive boats, the blue peter boat and boat trip times we con­tin­ued upwards to the clock tower for even more views of moun­tains and the cityscape.

Tues­day was our day of quiet rest, we lounged in our room and enjoyed the facil­i­ties of the resort, in par­tic­u­lar the crazy golf course which had some impos­si­bly dif­fi­cult holes, loop the loops and tun­nels. In the evening we went for a spe­cial night out, dress­ing up we vis­ited the supremely posh restau­rants that could be found in the medieval town of Mou­g­ins. We tried trans­lat­ing the menus but soon just opted for the nicest look­ing, least crowded eatery with trees grow­ing through the roof, much like the image shown above. The meal was absolutely deli­cious and per­fectly cooked and pre­pared. Sam ate escar­gots (snails) in a gar­lic & tomato sauce with a lemon gar­nished salad for starter whilst I ate a crab and lob­ster dish. We ordered the dry white house wine and for the main course I had a knife-slices-so-easily-through duck that you wouldn’t believe was poul­try with a fine sauce, cour­gettes, cau­li­flower, strange potato cakes, cele­riac and more tasty sup­ple­ments. Sam enjoyed the best-cooked lamb she had ever tasted and was pos­i­tively enthralled by it, indeed say­ing so to the wait­ers. For dessert she enjoyed a choco­late sponge thing with vanilla ice cream and real vanilla pods. I had the pear soaked in a red wine with added cin­na­mon crum­ble. Our very expen­sive meal was extremely deli­cious and well worth the money.

Come Wednes­day and with it our first big trip, we trav­elled to Nice by train from Cannes. French desk clerks and store peo­ples always seem so much more help­ful than their Eng­lish coun­ter­parts. Our prob­lems and wor­ries at the sta­tion were all kindly sorted by the French desk lady. We made it to Nice in good time and spent the day wan­der­ing their streets, look­ing through the flower mar­ket, pass­ing by the open air the­atre and sea front casi­nos, throw­ing peb­bles in the sea and spend­ing money to use pub­lic toi­lets. At the far end of the beach we trav­elled up to the top of a cliff where an old cas­tle used to stand. There were pub­lic gar­dens, water­falls, panora­mas and a fan­tas­tic view­point for watch­ing the planes fly in over Nice and land in the airport.

On Thurs­day we had a lie in and in the after­noon trav­elled back to Cannes for a boat trip to the off­shore island St. Marguerite.

It was a quiet island with the only build­ings being an old fort and the cham­bers where the man in the iron mask was sup­pos­edly kept. We slowly walked around the island, tak­ing in the mag­nif­i­cent Caribbean like qual­i­ties and feed­ing three kind and non-begging cats some of our fro­mage. Euca­lyp­tus trees and pine trees adorned the land mass:

It just so hap­pened, that in the week I was in France both the Pope and Prince Rainier of Monaco died. This put a slight damper on our trip to the impres­sive city built into a rock face, as did the over­cast weather. Half mast Monaco flags cov­ered the city which we reached by train. The weather put us off vis­it­ing the exotic gar­dens and caves of the region, yet despite cir­cum­stances we still decided to visit the prin­ci­pal­ity. Firstly we had to find a pub­lic lift down to the bot­tom, this was no easy task; finally we found a lift and it brought us to the entrance of the hos­pi­tal. From there we were greeted by whordes (sic) of press, cam­era crews and pho­tog­ra­phers wait­ing for the prince to leave the hos­pi­tal, here’s my not so good sneaky pic­ture of a few of them:

We pro­ceeded onwards and reached the prin­ci­pal­ity after vis­it­ing the clas­sic car and naval muse­ums, the zoo and the mas­sive under­ground super­mar­ket. The super­mar­ket sold every­thing from live crabs, lob­sters, shell­fish and shrimps to deep sea fish, pigs trot­ters and octo­pus salad. This must be under­wa­ter love. With even more walk­ing we enjoyed the vil­lage and scenes of the ancient prin­ci­pal­ity of the Grimaldi’s. As the rain spot­ted down we chose to visit the aquar­ium and life aquatic museum of Cousteau (with red hat). Here are some images:

On Sat­ur­day we returned home via train to Nice. We enjoyed the medieval city of Mou­g­ins one last time, took some more pho­tos and bought some more sou­venirs. At the air­port we waited 4 hours for our flight and were exhausted after car­ry­ing bag­gage every­where in the hot hot sun. But we were treated with mind blow­ingly beau­ti­ful views as we left Nice in our 767 plane: